In chemistry class, the girl to boy ratio is $8$ to $4$. If there are a total of $48$ students, how many boys are there?
A ratio of $8$ girls to $4$ boys means that a set of $12$ students will have $8$ girls and $4$ boys. A class of $48$ students has $4$ sets of $12$ students. Because we know that there are $4$ boys in each set of $12$ students, the class must have $4$ groups of $4$ boys each. There is a total of $16$ boys in chemistry class.